Al-Quds daily Tuesday highlighted a report by ABC News revealing an Israeli organization that specifically works to speed up demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Naqab desert.

The report said that Regavim, a pro-settlers organization, aims to find legal channels to execute and speed up demolition orders issued by Israeli authorities for Palestinian homes.

The three dailies reported on President Mahmoud Abbas affirming that there will not be a national unity government without conducting elections in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Al-Ayyam front page story highlighted Israeli soldiers killing of one Palestinian worker and injuring others at al-Zaim checkpoint east of Jerusalem after the soldiers opened fire at a vehicle transporting the workers to Jerusalem.

Al-Quds featured Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s latest racist statements saying that culture is one of the reasons that helped Israelis to be more economically successful than Palestinians.

The three papers reported on the horrific crime which took place in Bethlehem when a man slaughtered and stabbed to death his wife in the middle of a busy street due to family disputes.

Israeli settlers are moving into cities which are home to both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian citizens within Israel, bringing their ideology and practice of separation and colonial occupation back into Israel. Current target: Nazareth Illit.

“To live here is a true calling because of the demographic situation. From our perspective it’s no less important than living in Judea and Samaria.” So said Aviad Levi, chairperson of a group of “national-religious” Israelis who have moved into the northern city of Nazareth Illit.

“Until we arrived there was a wave of Jewish families leaving,” Levi told the settler-affiliated media outlet Arutz 7. “Arabs from Nazareth and Kfar Kana (were coming) and the non-Jewish immigration from Russia didn’t help,” he added.

Nazareth Illit is located in northern Israel and has a population of some 52,000 people. It was founded in 1954 on land confiscated from Palestinian residents of nearby Nazareth, the largest Palestinian town in Israel, and was intended to ensure “Jewish sovereignty” in the Galilee area.

“Everyone is happy we are here,” continued Levi. “Only yesterday I was walking in the street and a city resident told me that we are lifting the city up.” 16 settler families already live in the Rasco neighbourhood of Nazareth Illit, where they have established a Jewish place for study (beit midrash), and an additional four families are slated to arrive soon.

The mayor of Nazareth Illit,Shimon Gaspo, decided to build a neighbourhood in the city only for ultra-orthodox Jews as a way to deal with the “demographic situation.” Land for this new neighbourhood was also confiscated from its Palestinian owners.

“The matter of Jewish settlement in the Galilee in general, and in Nazareth Illit in particular, is of national importance today," Gapso said in a 2009 interview to Yedioth Ahronot. "As a man of Greater Israel, I think it is more important to settle in the Galilee than in Judea and Samaria, where natural growth is already high and enough Jews already live. I urge the settlers there to come here."

The northern West Bank settlement municipality of Samaria is preparing to receive thousands of Israeli tourists through the end of the summer holiday, many of them secular and from the Tel Aviv area. Record numbers of Israelis have taken holidays in the West Bank settlement areas this year.

“Samaria is opening its gates,” said head of the Samaria Regional Council Gershon Mesika to the settler-affiliated media outlet Arutz 7, “and the people of Israel are coming and enjoying the green open spaces. Only 20 minutes from central Israel and without traffic jams await cool springs, impressive historical and cultural sites, outstanding air, fun attractions and most importantly – happy and welcoming hosts.”

Tens of thousands of Israelis are reported to have visited West Bank settlement areas during the spring holidays, and this trend continues into the summer.

Special events are planned for Thursdays through the end of the summer. The Gvaot Olam “farm,” for example, will be open longer hours to accommodate visitors. Gvaot Olam specialises in goat cheese production and organic eggs, popular with the upper middle class secular crowd from the Tel Aviv area.

The “farm”, however, is actually an outpost of the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar, a settlement renowned for the violence of its residents (see here, for example). The farm, one of the West Bank’s first outposts, i.e. settlements constructed without prior Israeli government permission and planning, was built in 1996 and “legalized” by the government in 2000.

The outpost, built partially on private lands belonging to residents of the nearby Palestinian village of Yanoun, was constructed by Avri Ran, considered the spiritual father of the so-called hilltop youth. According to testimonies given to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, in May 2001 Avri Ran and others from the settlement took five Palestinian farmers away at gunpoint, beating them and shooting one.

This development of normative tourism industries in Israel’s illegal West Bank colonies serves to “normalize” both these Israeli military-civilian outposts on Palestinian land and provide sustainable sources of income for the settlers in jobs considered attractive to the mainstream Jewish Israeli population.

With the impunity enjoyed by Israel within the international community for its crimes against the Palestinian people, this trend of normalizing Israel’s colonisation and making these colonized areas an attractive destination for Israelis will only continue.

Israel reports that the influx of settlers to the West Bank has increased by 4.5 % bringing the total number of illegal Israeli settlers to 350,143, according to the Population Registry of Israel’s Ministry of Interior, Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, and the Palestine News Network.

This figure excludes areas like Givan Ze’ev, Neve Yaakov, Ramat Eshkol, and Armon Hanatziv north and east of Jerusalem where the Israeli population numbers an additional 300,000.

Data shows that in the past year, 15,579 settlers moved to the West Bank and in the past 12 years, the total population has doubled.

Most of this increase has occurred outside of the large settlement blocs, which have maintained population stability. Ariel has about 50,000 settlers, Ma’aleh Adumim has about 45,000 and Gush Etzion about 22,000. The total population living in these large blocs is 116,824, while 233,000 live outside of these settlement compounds.

MK Yaakov Katz (Ketzale), Chairman of the National Union, expressed his approval at these numbers saying, “though settlement construction was halted last year, but it has grown in the West Bank. According to the current pace of settlement growth, it is expected that the number of settlers will reach about 400,000 settlers before the next general.” He chillingly added, “In the coming four years, the number of settlers will reach about half a million, and after the annexation of East Jerusalem settlements the number of Jewish settlers will exceed one million, competing the full demographic coup.”29 july 2012

Israeli settlers from Havat Ma’on illegal outpost in the south Hebron hills Saturday terrorized a Palestinian child and attacked international activists in Humra valley in the area, according to a press release by Operation Dove.

It said the activists were called to accompany the child on his way from one village to another in the area. The activists arrived at Humra valley to find out that five masked settlers have chased after the child. Settlers threw rocks and used a slingshot against the activists.

One of the child’s relatives said the child was transferred to hospital after being traumatized by the attack, added the press release.

A state of anticipation and alert has prevailed since the morning hours of Sunday among the Palestinian worshipers inside the Aqsa Mosque and its courtyard after masses of Jewish settlers started to flock into the area in an attempt to defile the Mosque to commemorate the alleged destruction of the temple anniversary.

The Israeli police declared their intention to secure the entry of the Jewish settlers to the Mosque to perform rituals on the anniversary.

The Hebrew radio stated that the police would intensify their presence inside and around the Mosque to protect the settlers and quell any clashes that might break out with the Palestinians.

For its part, the Aqsa foundation for endowment and heritage said thousands of settlers gathered this morning in the Buraq square (wailing wall), while other settlers along with right-wing Knesset members marched in a rally across the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Aqsa foundation also said that hundreds of Palestinian natives from Jerusalem and the 1948 occupied lands have been inside the Aqsa Mosque and its courtyards since the early morning hours to defend it against any Jewish attempt to violate its sanctity.

Clashes between Jerusalemite youths on the one hand and elements of the Israeli occupation police and dozens of Jewish settlers on the other erupted on Saturday night.

The confrontations took place in the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, and resulted in the arrest of three young men at least who were taken to an unknown destination.

Eyewitnesses said that settlers organized a march in the Damascus Gate under the pretext of preparing to break into the Aqsa's plazas on Sunday in what the settlers call "the anniversary of the Destruction of the Temple".

The witnesses added that dozens of settlers gathered near the Damascus Gate and started their provocative practices against Jerusalemites encouraged with the presence of Israeli special units which were deployed in an attempt to carry out more arrests against Jerusalemites.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation forces were deploying on Saturday at crossroads of villages in Southern Al-Khalil, and set up a number of checkpoints.

Abu Hassan Ahmed from Dora town in Al-Khalil told PIC's reporter that more than ten military jeeps stationed at the crossroads of villages south of Dora and the deployed soldiers began searching the identities of passers-by.

by Allison DegerCommentary magazine is up in arms over yesterday's New York Times op-ed, where Dani Dayan, head of the Settlers Council of Judea and Samaria, announced Israel's "unassailable" right to takeover Palestinian land. Today the pro-Israel, neoconservative publication ran a piece by Seth Mandel, decrying Dayan's "settlers are here to stay" call as callous: What about the Palestinians? Dayan doesn’t say Israel should give the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria voting rights. If he would, is he not concerned about the demographics at play? If he would not, is he suggesting that the Palestinians should be a permanently stateless people and that Israel would be permanently without clear national borders? He writes that Israeli security should be paramount, but the Judea and Samaria he envisions would be a long-term security nightmare for Israel. Mandel also knocks Dayan as dangerous to U.S. interests: [H]as he [Dayan] thought through the implications to U.S. foreign policy of his proposal? Specifically, he seems to want the U.S.–a principal external force on the peace process–to ignore its own dedication to the right of self-determination for the Palestinians. But that would mean weakening American devotion to the general principle of self-determination, which is a major driving force behind continued American support for Israel. And Dayan is called out for claiming it is impossible to dismantle settlements: Dayan claims removing the settlers would be impossible. Why? Today there are no settlers in Gaza. In a separate piece today, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)'s Uriel Heilman caught Dayan mirroring an editorial written months earlier by a representative of the Israeli government, Likud Knesset member Danny Danon. While most voices in the Israeli and international news media are calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to grant major concessions to the Palestinians to forestall such a move, he should in fact do the opposite: he should annex the Jewish communities of the West Bank, or as Israelis prefer to refer to our historic heartland, Judea and Samaria... In addition to its obvious ideological and symbolic significance, legalizing our hold on the West Bank would also increase the security of all Israelis by depriving terrorists of a base and creating a buffer against threats from the east. Moreover, we would be well within our rights to assert, as we did in Gaza after our disengagement in 2005, that we are no longer responsible for the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who would continue to live in their own — unannexed — towns. These Palestinians would not have the option to become Israeli citizens, therefore averting the threat to the Jewish and democratic status of Israel by a growing Palestinian population. The JTA's report clearly indicates that while Mandel and other U.S. conservatives oppose Dayan's bid to conquer the West Bank, the settler leader is backed by the Israeli government's ruling party.

Heartfelt thanks (truly) to the New York Times for doing a public service by publishing this op-ed by Dani Dayan, the essential manifesto of the current state of Israeli colonialism, stripped of any pretense: one state in all of Palestine, run by the Jews in perpetuity, with a basket of limited rights for the lucky subject people—if they behave themselves. And forget about the "right of return of Palestinians to Palestine," the sine qua non of the so-called homeland of the Palestinian people. NB: I'm not speaking of Israel. Dayan makes clear: Greater Israel (i.e., what others call the occupied territories) will not allow itself to be overrun by returning Palestinians). That's out of the question. The bizarre Israeli concept of democracy rests on controlling the demographic threat such that there must never be a Palestinian majority in the one state. So long as Jews are the majority, the thinking goes, they may in good conscience oppress the minority. That is the meaning of majoritarian democracy (also known as ethnocracy) as understood by Israeli Jews; a bill of rights protecting all does not figure in to this system. Author Dani Dayan is not a crank in the sense of being a wild-eyed outlier. Rather, he is the chairman of the settler council in the "Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria" (to the rest of us aka the occupied Palestinian territories). He speaks truth to (1) the leadership of the Western world, too cowardly ever to challenge the voracious Israeli appetite for Lebensraum; to (2) all those Jewish organizations that supported Israeli aggression and colonialism through thick and thin in the name of a "two-state solution" that was being obviated by the very acts they supported; and to (3) all those individual Jews who have mouthed the two-state lies themselves while also denying the aggression and colonialism to critics. I know plenty of the number 3's myself, and I know that many of you do, too. There are many in the Jewish world—the Adelson types, the Malcom Hoenlein types, the Mort Klein (ZOA) types, the Aipac types, most of the Orthodox Jewish world—who were already on board with the apartheid program. But for the faux liberals—the JStreet types—this will be uncomfortable indeed, as playing pretend has been their stock in trade. But the mask has been removed, revealing the ugly face of Israeli colonialism for all to see. The time for denial has ended, because this, then, is the dystopian vision of the single state of Greater Israel, in which the Palestinian population will live in its bantustans under the oppressive thumb of the Jewish overlords as Israeli Jewish colonists expand their illegal reach to every corner of Palestine, what the rest of the world considers the OPT (occupied Palestinian territories). The solution (Lebensraum) to the Israeli housing crisis lies on stolen land. This is the apartheid one-state solution of which Jimmy Carter warned in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006). No doubt all recall that he was excoriated as an anti-Semite for daring to utter the words. Now we should welcome this bald, if grotesque, presentation by Dani Dayan because it is indeed the reality on the ground and it is time that everyone knew it. Let the foolish Europeans sort this one out, for they know well that Dayan expresses the reality that comes out of Netanyahu's government and yet, as we read not two days ago in the Guardian, the EU is piling up the presents it intends to heap on Israel—for bad behavior, apparently. Presumably President Obama, if reelected, will not embarrass himself with any more talk of two states. And presumably the Israelis advocating Israeli unilateralism to get toward a two-state solution (that is, of course, totally unfair to the Palestinians), e.g., Blue White Future, or Shaul Mofaz's absurd 60 percent plan, will realize that they have been exposed as frauds by the settler movement and the government that backs it. The question now is how the "world"—states, organizations, individuals—will choose to go forward. Will they continue to support the one apartheid state? One thing is for sure: the growing grass roots movement to end the occupation, including BDS, will continue to expand its push for justice and equality for all (i.e., for Palestinians, who are the ones lacking justice and equality). And that effort is looking more and more as if it must be in the context of the one-state reality created by the Jewish colonial project—only without the apartheid. Dani Dayan pulls no punches: it's there in blue and white for all to see.

Israeli settlers continued to seize more Palestinian lands in the West Bank to expand and build more settlements.

Local sources said that the settlers have set up dozens of mobile homes under the Israeli occupation army’s protection in Baten Al-Maassi area in Al-Khader village, south of Bethlehem, in order to expand Tamar settlement which was established at the beginning of the Aqsa Intifada.

In another context, Ahmad Salah, the coordinator of the popular committee against settlements in Al-Khader town, said that a number of settlers set up power poles and lines into the trench which they dug a few days ago in the land owned by Suleiman Osman Sabih's sons located in Ein Al-Kassis west of the town.

He called on the international human rights organizations and institutions to stop the Israeli settlement project in Al-Khader town.

Israeli police raided al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City late Wednesday and forced around 20 Muslim worshipers performing night prayer to leave the premise, witnesses said on Thursday.

They said that the police detained an imam, who was leading the prayer, and transferred him to an unknown location before closing the gates to the compound until dawn prayer.

Police restricted entry of young men into Al-Aqsa who were headed to perform dawn prayer, while keeping identity papers of other until they leave the Mosque.

Muslim leaders have warned that fanatic Jews will try to enter al-Haram al-Sharif compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites which houses al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, to hold ceremonies marking the destruction of the Jewish temple more than 3000 years ago, which coincides on Sunday.

The leaders called on Muslims to keep a constant vigil at the compound to defend it against the intruders.

Dozens of Jerusalemite youths engaged in violent confrontations with Israeli occupation forces in a number of suburbs in occupied Jerusalem at dawn Thursday.

Eyewitnesses said that the confrontations flared after Jewish settlers and policemen stormed the holy Aqsa mosque, forced out worshippers, and arrested a religious scholar for refusing to get out of the mosque.

The Israeli occupation authority has allowed Jewish settlers to intensify their desecration of the Aqsa mosque during the holy fasting month of Ramadan under heavy security protection.

The Jordanian council of trade unions strongly denounced the break-in at the Aqsa Mosque by Jewish settlers on Tuesday and called for immediate Arab and Islamic moves to prevent the occurrence of such violations against the Mosque.

"This is something offending to the feelings of all Muslims and blatantly violating the sanctity of the holy sites," head of the council Ahmed Al-Armouti stated on Wednesday.

Armouti warned against extremist Jewish settlers' intention to desecrate the Aqsa Mosque next Sunday to commemorate their alleged destruction of the temple anniversary.

The unionist urged the Jordanian government to necessarily make further efforts to protect the Aqsa Mosque against the repeated Jewish violations.

He also called on the UN and the Arab League to condemn these violations and prevent their occurrence.25 july 2012

Israeli soldiers Wednesday arrested three Palestinians and settlers attacked several others in the southern West Bank governorate of Hebron, according to local and security sources.

They told WAFA that Israeli soldiers arrested Tamer Jabarin, 22, and Mo’tasem al-Natsheh in the city of Hebron after raiding their houses and ransacking their contents.

Coordinator of the popular committee against settlements and the Apartheid Wall in Beit Ummar, a town north of Hebron, Mohammad Awad told WAFA that Israeli forces raided the town and arrested a teenager.

Israel detains 77 Palestinians from Beit Ummar, more than 45 of them are under the age of 18, added Awad.

In addition, Israeli settlers in Sosiya settlement in the south Hebron hills attacked residents in the nearby village of Sosiya, while settlers in Hebron city assaulted several Palestinians in Tel al Rumeida neighborhood under the Israeli army protection.

The Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage (AFEH) has warned of an escalation in the Israeli occupation forces and settlers’ storming of the holy Aqsa mosque on the eve of its so-called “destruction of the Temple” anniversary next Sunday.

AFEH statement followed the news about the breaking into the Aqsa plazas by around 120 Jewish settlers who entered the holy site in groups since the early morning hours of Wednesday.

It said groups of settlers toured the Aqsa plazas while listening to Talmudic explanations and offered religious rituals.

Eyewitnesses said that the tours were made under heavy security protection that heightened tension in the holy site.

The Israeli occupation army on Tuesday set up a military watchtower in an agricultural Palestinian land seized by a group of Jewish settlers in Al-Khader village, south of Bethlehem.

Ahmad Salah, the coordinator of the popular committee against settlements in Al-Khader, told Quds press that Israeli occupation forces (IOF) accompanied with settlers set up a military watchtower in an agricultural area to the west of the town.

He pointed out that the area was seized by the Jewish settlers ten days ago where they placed a mobile home.

Salah said this watchtower will be used as a military outpost to monitor farmers' movement, which farmers consider a nightmare as the grape harvest season is approaching and they are afraid of being prevented from accessing their agricultural lands.

The residents of the Buqei'a settlement in the North Jordan Valley seized Palestinian land on Monday morning as part of their continued illegal expansion.

The land, 50 dunums, was promptly fenced and barricaded by the settlers who prevented the Palestinian owners from entering it.

Local sources recalled that whoever entered the mentioned land was being arrested in line with the ongoing scheme to gain full control over it.

Meanwhile, settlers seized on Monday morning a land in "Susia" area near the town of Yatta southern Al-Khalil.

Ratib Al-Jabour, the coordinator of the popular committees against settlements in Yatta, has explained that Jewish settlers of Susia settlement seized a land, 5 dunums, belonging to Hadar family.

Jabour noted that the settlers have installed a power generator in the land to pave the way for building a settlement outpost in the region.

On the other hand, settlers have destroyed agricultural lands and uprooted fruit trees belonging to a Palestinian farmer from the town of Khother, southern Bethlehem, in order to establish a road in the center of a land owned by Ibrahim Suleiman Sabih and his brothers, according to Hassan Sabih, a local municipality official.

Sabih told Quds Press that settlers of Ananias settlement are waging an attack campaign against the Palestinian lands in the town of Kother and its surrounding areas, where the fruit trees in Sabih's land have been uprooted for the second time.

The Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage (AFEH) said that the policemen were protecting dozens of Jewish settlers when they arrested the Palestinian student Ghassan Younis.

AFEH said that 30 Jewish settlers stormed the holy site under heavy police protection, adding that they offered Talmudic rituals in a number of areas, took photos of other areas, and interviewed settlers about breaking into the Aqsa.

The foundation underlined that the occupation police intensified presence in the vicinity of the Aqsa mosque and hampered entry of Muslim worshipers to the noon prayers.

The royal committee for Jerusalem affairs in Jordan appealed to the international community to intervene to protect the Aqsa Mosque against Israel's violations.

In a statement to the Jordanian news agency, secretary-general of the royal committee Abdullah Kanaan said his committee is following up with great concern Israel's violations against the Islamic and Christian holy sites.

Kanaan warned that racist Israeli officials and extremist Jewish settlers intend to desecrate the Aqsa Mosque on July 29 encouraged by a recent Knesset draft law stipulating that the Aqsa Mosque is under Israel's authority.

"The occupation state and its Zionist government should know that the international law will be the judge sooner or later," the Jordanian official stressed.

"Jordan represented by its Hashemite leadership, its people and its army, has sacrificed throughout history and since the emergence of the Palestinian cause with everything dear and precious and lost martyrs for Jerusalem and Palestine," the official underscored.

He called on the UN, the Arab League, the organization of the Islamic cooperation and the Jerusalem committee headed by Moroccan King Mohamed bin Al-Hasan to hasten to invite the international community to assume their responsibilities towards the Palestinian Islamic and Christian holy sites.

Dozens of Jewish settlers stormed on Monday morning the holy Aqsa mosque led by Jewish rabbis who were explaining for the settlers about the Aqsa mosque according to the Talmudic vision.

Eyewitnesses reported that more than forty Jewish extremists stormed the Aqsa mosque, led by rabbis, while an Israeli military force, in uniform, entered the mosque from the Maghareba gate and roamed in its courtyards to provide protection for the settlers.

Jewish groups have been calling on their supporters to take part in the storming of the Aqsa Mosque on the anniversary of what they called “The destruction of the Temple", which marks the twenty-ninth of this month, according to their claim.

The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) kidnapped at dawn Monday five Palestinians including three children from the occupied cities of Jerusalem and Al-Khalil and took them handcuffed and blindfolded to an unknown destination.

Local sources told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that troops from the police and border guards kidnapped in Silwan district, south of the Aqsa Mosque, two brothers under age 18, Mohamed and Amer Zeidan, during a violent raid on their house.

The IOF also kidnapped a 20-year-old young man called Ahmed Obeid from Issawiya district in Jerusalem and took him to an unknown destination.

In Al-Khalil city, the IOF kidnapped a child named Saqer Mohamed, 13, from Beit Awa town and another man from Al-Khalil city during raids on their houses.

In a separate incident, a group of Jewish settlers destroyed Palestinian cultivated lands in Al-Khader town south of Bethlehem city.

Eyewitnesses reported that the settlers dug a 30-meter trench in an agricultural land owned by Esbih family and ruined 14 dunums of cultivated land.

A Zionist group launched an incitement campaign against Ahmed Tibi, the head of the "Arab Bloc for Change" in the Israeli Knesset, after he tore photos of rabbi Meir Kahane in response to tearing the Bible by MK Michael Ben Ari.

The incitement campaign against Tibi, which had been launched by the Zionist group "Kach" and the followers of Baruch Marzel, reached the extent of the threat of murder, in addition to publishing insulting pictures on Facebook, comparing Tibi and all Muslims with pigs, under the banner of "Kahane was right."

Tibi’s office issued a statement on Saturday saying that the MK received threat messages on his e-mail as well as his Facebook page in which lots of fascist and racist abuses have been published.

A number of Jewish settlers set up on Saturday evening five prefabricated houses in Umm Hamdeen Hill near Khader town in Bethlehem province.

Head of the land defense committee in Khader town Ahmed Salah said about 20 Jewish settlers inhabited the houses in an attempt to establish a new settlement outpost on this Hill, which is located a few meters away from the Palestinian homes in Al-Rukba neighborhood.

Salah added that the settlers provided the houses with utilities under intensive military guard.

He noted the Hill land that was seized by those settlers is owned by Palestinian citizens from the families of Mousa and Salah in Artas village and it is cultivated with vine, olive and almond trees.

The owners of this land declared their determination to defend their property and not to allow the settlers to annex it to Efrat settlement, which extends from the far southern part of Bethlehem to its far east.

Jewish settlers destroyed vineyards, olive and almond trees of a Palestinian farmer for the second time in 24 hours in Beit Ummar village, north of Al-Khalil, local sources said.

Mohammed Awad, the spokesman for the popular anti-settlement committee in the village, said that settlers from Beit Ayin settlement damaged dozens of olive and almond trees and vineyards owned by Hammad Al-Salibi in Abul Reesh area in the village.

He said that Salibi was surprised to see his field, which is located near to the settlement, attacked again on Friday in the second such attack in 24 hours and dozens of trees chopped off and thrown on the ground.

Awad said that the settlers uprooted 35 vine trees, 12 almond trees, and six olive trees, which were more than 50 years old.

Jewish settlers Thursday uprooted olive and almond trees in an area in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, according to a local activist.

Spokesman of the National Committee against the Wall and settlement, Mohammed Awad, told WAFA that settlers from the nearby settlement of Beit Ain, built illegally on the town’s land, uprooted around 25 olive and almond trees belonging to 77-year-old Palestinian Hamad Salibi.

Salibi has lost more than 200 trees due to repeated settlers’ attacks on his land in addition to beatings and threats in an attempt to force him to abandon his land in order to seize it. Farming is Salibi’s only source of livelihood.

On Saturday 14 July 2012, ten Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian shepherd and killed one of his sheep in Turmus ‘Ayya, a village to the north of Ramallah city. This is the second incident of settler violence against Palestinian shepherds that Al-Haq has documented in the past two weeks.

Hasan Mahmoud Abu ‘Alya, (49 years old), is a Palestinian farmer in Turmus ‘Ayya. For ten years, Hasan cultivated the land and used it to feed his 160 sheep.

On 14 July, at around 6:00 pm, while Hasan and his five-year-old grandson were walking their sheep on the land, they saw ten masked men holding knives, batons and rifles walking down a hill near an outpost called Adei Ad towards them. The masked men were speaking Hebrew. Hasan, who knew that the men were Israeli settlers from their religious clothing, feared for his grandson’s life and backed away from the settlers. He saw four of the settlers catching one of the sheep and slaughtering it. The other settlers were hitting the sheep with their batons and throwing stones at the flock. When Hasan tried to protect his sheep, he was stabbed in his right hand. He later received six stitches to close the wound.

Hasan then phoned his son Fadi, (27 years old), to ask for his help. Ten minutes later, Fadi along with other shepherds came to the area. Once the settlers saw the Palestinian shepherds approaching them, they left the area. At around 6:30 pm, Israeli police officers arrived at the scene to investigate the incident. The police questioned Hasan and his son Fadi and asked them to file a complaint in the Israeli police station located in Binyamin settlement within two hours.

Two hours later, Hasan and Fadi gave statements and filed their complaint at the Israeli police station. The Israeli police officers then asked Fadi to come back again the following day to give them a photo of the attack that he took with his cell phone. The next day, the Israeli police officers refused to receive Fadi.

Hasan, who has been subject to Israeli settlers’ violence on more than one occasion, recalls that the perpetrators have never been accountable by the Israeli authorities. (Al-Haq Affidavit No. 7566/2012)

Settlers in the West Bank enjoy a climate of impunity, which has resulted in an escalation in both the level of violence and the frequency of attacks on Palestinians. In the past two years, the number of settler attacks against Palestinians has increased by over 144 per cent.

Another striking example of settler violence incident took place on 7 July 2012, when Israeli settlers from Itimar settlement attacked shepherds in ‘Aqraba, a Palestinian village 17 kilometers south of Nablus. Five sheep were killed during the attack, in addition to four more being stolen. Twenty sheep were also injured during the incident. (Al-Haq Affidavit No. 7568/2012)

Al-Haq is gravely concerned that the reoccurrence of such attacks without any mechanism of accountability for the perpetrators will further encourage such violations and will continue to affect the livelihoods of Palestinian shepherds.